


The Last Daughter and the End of All Things:

by VladimirHarkonnen (TheLightdancer)



Series: Sex, Death, and Half-Demon Multiversal Sorceresses [4]
Category: Power Girl (Comics), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Eldritch, Endless biology, F/F, Kryptonian Biology, Rope Bondage, power perversion potential
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:53:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26656198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/VladimirHarkonnen
Summary: Karen Starr goes clubbing one night and encounters a very strange woman.
Relationships: Power Girl/Death of the Endless
Series: Sex, Death, and Half-Demon Multiversal Sorceresses [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754041
Kudos: 3





	The Last Daughter and the End of All Things:

Karen Starr knew that one level the not-her of this world and the not-Clark of this world disapproved of this. This, being her, in her outfit as a businesswoman with a bright white shirt and a dark blue blazer and miniskirt going to clubs, drinking, and picking up women. It wasn't that she picked up women itself, nor that she was with women. Clark and Kara, like her Clark and her Kara were understanding of those things. It was that she did this to drown out the sorrows that welled up in her sometimes from being the last woman of her own Krypton. They felt it unfair to the women, even dangerous.

Karen was unlike them. She'd outlived her world, too, but then she'd gone and outlived her own universe. This multiverse even had another Power Girl, its own Power Girl, in its own Earth-Two. She was a bit of a dimensional rover, she'd spent time in one world encountering strange events concerning one of the seven Endless. That multiverse had proven far too strange for her liking and after the great showdown she'd decided to move to another, because it didn't really matter. Every single one she'd found had a Power Girl, and in each case she found worlds that knew what it was to be both the last son and daughter of Krypton in Earth-2. She was familiar with not fitting in anywhere, and with the sensation of going on too long.

To them it was merely drowning one kind of sorrow but it went much deeper, and she felt insulted, really. She lived her entire life more powerful than any other Kryptonian in her world, or in any of these worlds. She could throw planets like balls, light stars with her eyes. She could hear the chatters across comms of a passing Citadel ship. In this club the music was blaring as she looked down at her drink, a very strong whiskey. It was kind of cheating, really, all part of the task of seeming human. Her skin transformed starlight into the power to lift mountains and to divert rivers, to squeeze a charcoal briquette into a diamond. The wonder that made that possible was one to which transmuting the effects of human alcohol, even the strongest like this was nothing at all.

The music blared and she could hear lyrics from a singer with a flat voice who didn't understand the harmonics of lyrics she very clearly did not write. It was clear why these places tended to make the music so loud it drowned out the lyrics in one way. She could hear the presses of bodies and smell them, knew things more than most did. Starr Industries was a place that had designed all manner of smaller and larger scale wonders, means of making little technologies more widely available. Among the things that had made her richest was a kind of fabric designed to avoid friction burns from super-speed, as that kind of quite literal streaking was both embarrassing and unless one was known to be a superhero it ended up with things handled quietly by Wayne Industries where it was from the more benevolent kind of metahuman. That enabled her to do little things like ensuring two people who intended to roofie women had their drugs placed in their own glasses, a thing that left her amused and content that nobody saw it.

Of course, with the pandemic, only the most foolhardy mortals and metahumans whose powers permitted invulnerability to the virus were out and about anyway, but even then she was _fast._ Only the wielders of the Speed Force could outmatch her and they relied on a whole other dimension that permitted them to do what they did, they didn't do things on their own steam. She heard and smelt the people bumping and grinding against each other, the ways individual bodies shook and how breaths hissed and merged together, heartbeats accelerating and the little tells of people doing things.

She could see atoms in Jupiter and hear though not understand the words of two Green Lantern Corps people passing through the Oort Cloud, members of a species whose language she did not know. Here, amidst this pounding thrumming drumming music she could act normal and hone her focus, she could let Karen Star prevail over Kara Zor-L and Power Girl tonight.

Her legs moved in a crossed position. She was not uncomfortable, and she was able to cheat in a sense with the way the same gravitational effects that let her fly and move in a fashion more than by inertia in the vacuum made her chest neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, just there. Other people made her breasts into something that seemed to substitute for her being herself. She didn't really understand that. They were big and they were there and she could and did lift mountains and punch Gods into orbit, but her boob window led to people thinking so little of things.

She shrugged, imperceptibly. The horniness of people here led her to actually think about that, about her bralessness.

It wasn't a big deal, it was part of her body. A body was just that, a body. A chassis of meat and bone and muscle, and blood, alien or human, capable of smaller miracles with baseline humans and far bigger ones with her kind. Her body was tall, at six feet four inches, and it had a kind of muscle and density that were somewhat more than a normal human, like that of Kara, or Kal. Kryptonians were mostly humanoid but never quite right, but then that made sense. Starlight fed them and it empowered them, and there was wonder and there was beauty in that.

She could see atoms in Jupiter and heard the flapping of bird wings and the droning of airplanes in the sky, the whooshing sound of other heroes, listening quietly in case they had wanted to go somewhere, or near anywhere. It was near impossible to sneak up on her, and this meant that her reactions when people did it reflected that of a quiet view that the near-imposssible stood out that much more. She felt a hand tapping on her shoulder, and then jerked upward in a set of motions that managed to make jerking upward with big wide eyes and a slight eye-twitch seem almost totally dignified.

The hand that had done it was bone-hued, colorless, almost. Fingernails on it were long and almost claw-like and they were part of a flawless hand that connected to bare arms within a tank top, a tank top that had a silver ankh drooping down from it. The tank top was dark and so were the belt, pants, and boots, but next to the claws and her hair and her eyes they were a lighter shade of black, a reflection that in human terms black was a concept that did not exist. But with that hair and those eyes and those nails it did, and it existed in a totality she could have drowned in. The woman had a kindly smile and looked at her in an amused fashion, her grin with lips closed but those black lips too were familiar.

"I thought it wasn't going to be my time for....a long time?"

_**I'm not here for you for that, silly.** _

She playfully punched Karen on her shoulder and Karen jolted a bit at her actually feeling it. She knew who this woman was, and what she was. It made perfect sense that the personification of Death herself could punch a Kryptonian in the shoulder lightly and it feel like regular interaction did, like it did on Krypton beneath Rao in the old days.

_**How long has it been since you came here and were able to be with someone you could cut loose with with without any consequence, just let yourself be....enjoying anything and everything you could do? By 'here' I mean anywhere since Argo City?** _

Karen blinked, her finger tapping her chin. She could hear annoyed murmurs and contempt about "Why are all the hot chicks lesbos" that led to her wanting to react to that the way it deserved but the question had more of her attention than she'd in truth intended to give it. Well, at first.

"It's.....been a while."

Death smiled and her hand moved from her shoulder to brush at Karen's wrist with that same deceptive softness that concealed a strength infinitely, one could say....endlessly...in excess of her own.

_**Kind of annoying, isn't it?** _

Karen nodded vehemently.

 _ **Well.....what I'm offering you is this, Karen Starr. Take me to your place, and.....**_ she looked at her with her head drooping slightly, an impish smile on her face and it was a very bright one. _**Well, you can figure out the rest. I never did thank you for helping with the whole business with the Jotunn, especially not the way you deserved.**_

"Wouldn't Raven be jealous?"

Death laughed, lightly.

_**No, she can't be monogamous with anyone no matter how much she wants to. She begrudges nobody else that we have our fun. Besides, it was her idea.** _

Karen couldn't resist the smile, then, and reached out to pull Death closer, the other woman straddling her slightly.

"In that case I hope you're ready for what you're getting into."

Death leaned over and her voice echoed in Kara's left ear with that strange sound that made it the most lovely and soothing voice anyone could hear or would ever hear:

_**I hope the same for you, too.** _

With that Karen and Death strode out, arm in arm, unconcerned with the way that heads traversed to look at them with mixtures of envy and resentment. The sexy blonde with the bob and the Goth lesbian also heard various murmurs but neither cared nor bothered to care about them nor their nature, simply enjoying striding out into an alley right next to the bar. 

Metropolis in its own way was as strange as Gotham, where parts of time and fashion were frozen in the eternal 1930s, and parts of it were every bit as futuristic as Metropolis. Where Gotham had this, Metropolis was the most alien city on Earth. Akin more to the various cities of planets that knew all too well of extraterrestrial life, yet it still had alleys like this that at night were shadowy places, the kind where a woman tall and blonde and short-haired could look around and briefly light with eyes that blazed like red suns, as a shorter woman looked at her with an amused grin, and then picked the other woman up bridal-style.

She levitated above the ground, holding Death who for all her smallness was surprisingly heavy, and then took off. Flight was still a thing of wonder to her after all those years. To be able to move from the ground and above, gravity pulling at her sullenly but spurned. The feeling of the soft cloth against her, the Endless-flesh that was not flesh in truth but felt akin to it. Death's hair whipping against her skin and blazer with enough force to feel and for that alone she would have done this. A partner that she could feel, that would leave her feeling real in a way nothing really had since her very first loves back in the days, long long ago, in the far off lands of Argo City in the Krypton of her Earth-2.

In five seconds they crossed the entirety of Metropolis, arriving at the window of her Penthouse suite in a building she'd owned. As the CEO of Starr Industries and its owner, she used her money quietly to fund two major companies that specialized in reconstruction after superhero fights, and to design things like this building built for her strength, strength to match that asshole Superboy-Prime. She lifted the window and let Death in, and the two floated to her bedroom, Death briefly manifesting her wings and moving aside from her, looking around with small smiles and little approving hums.

In any universe Karen Starr went, she opened Starr Industries and designed a place built to function well without her direct presence. The things that meant just as much to her as punching the likes of Kalibak the Cruel into orbit, and just as satisfying. Death's little hums echoed in her ears in a way that little sound other than that of her brothers, Dream and Destiny, and of the big burly Destruction, had.

They arrived at her bedroom, patterned after its counterpart in Krypton, her name in Argonian inscribed on the door. Little touches. Traces of a girl who'd grown up in an advanced culture that knew so much and in the end knew nothing at all and would never know anything at all ever again.

Death paused, removing her boots with an effortless grace, her wings vanished.

She smiled, calmly and quietly, and looked at Kara. 

**_If you're worried about hurting me because of what I look like, don't be. You're very strong, Kara Zor-L of Argo City, but there is nothing you can to do hurt me. There's no command feather now._** With a trollish grin on her face she briefly deepened her voice with a sign of her true alien nature, of that which lurked behind that small and lithe body and the infinitely dark eyes.

_**I got no strings to hold me down/there are no strings on me!** _

Kara Zor-L snorted, she couldn't resist. Death giggled lightly.

_**What can I say? Live infinite lives and even things that seem so silly and childish become interesting just to feel.** _

That brought Karen up short and Death's hand reached out to touch her wrist slightly and to brush against it, her nails things that Karen could feel.

_**I promise you, I get it, i get you, and you can't hurt me.** _

That was all she had time to say before Karen had the door opened, shut, and even Death's own perceptions could not quite chart the instances from there that wound up with her tied to a bed, her nudity fully exposed and only her ankh phasing through her clothes. Her body had flawless skin that was clearly inhuman, no melanin visible, the bonds that held her hands and her feet tight. She could feel them and yet at any point she wished to, she could also flex those wrists and those ankles and they would be less useful than a firearm shooting Karen in the face.

The being on her bed looked human, like a thin waif of a girl with figures that seemed ever-young but she was not human. The dripping from her legs, first drip, then drip-drip, then more of a stream-like effect was human-like but the way her body moved against the sheets was not. Most mortal skin had little imperfections that rasped. Here there was a sound Karen could not quite describe as Death wriggled, flushed and licked her lips. Her own eyes traversed Karen Starr's body, bereft of hair beneath the neck. Karen did not need to shave to that extent, but she found it less tiresome if she shaved to either shave all of it or none of it, and all of it with her heat vision was simpler. The Endless had a bush, the Last Daughter of Earth-2 had a bare pussy, and Death licked her lips again at the sight of it.

While the rest of her was aesthetically flawless by any species' standards, her labia were slightly different, the lips on the right slightly longer than those on the left but a more bow-like curve, the ones on the left shorter but more of a crinkled shape. Karen's were smaller and closer to the body, though her own juices dripped and she could hear that. Karen levitated by her bed hands by her side, and curled her legs beside her, levitating over the bed as Death wriggled slightly and hummed appreciatively, as Karen dropped herself on top of her stomach.

That would have killed most mortals, and even the most powerful metahumans would have been winded. Death hummed appreciatively on a different note, and again when Karen's hands slid out and flipped over with her palms caressing Death's wrists, leaning down. Another strange sign of what Death was and was not was that her body did not weigh down on her, and that their breasts felt equal, Death's if anything slightly physically superior to her own, as her flesh felt squishy in certain areas where for all its softness that of the Endless did not.

Then their lips met, and they met with a surprising strength and delicacy that combined to leave Power Girl shuddering slightly and her shudders mirrored by a light tremor in Death's own body. Death's tongue felt human enough but to her amusement, her lips curling upward during the kiss into a smile it did not take but thirty seconds for Death's tongue to yield to her own, and for her to start dominating the kiss, though the Endless eagerly returned it. A brief stab of a heady rush went through her. She had one of the Seven, the figures that unified the multiverse, in her bed, tied down.

She was kissing her and the waifish embodiment of Death had dared her to do her worst, trusted her after everything else she, and her, had seen to let her do this. How could this not be heady? The kiss deepened and she lost minutes in that kiss, in the feeling of her hands sliding from wrists to arms to shoulders, down Death's body, down it. Feeling a body that was a body, and quite the beautiful one, too, and was not one. Hearing Death's humming approval and near-singing as they kissed, feeling tremors she felt at every part of her own body, delight intensified to their mutual pleasure.

Eventually, after what might have been years or fifteen minutes she broke the kiss, a strand of saliva that connected them falling flat with a splishing sound against Death's chin, Death's grin eager and her eyes almost glowing in turn. Karen smirked and then levitated further up, lowering her thighs around Death's face. Here was a thing that the only ways she could get it were the various murderers and criminals of the Phantom Zone (haw haw), Vartox (very Sean Connery ish which was tempting but otherwise oh hell no) or with the not-her and the not-Clark, which was insulting to the memory of the Kara and Kal she'd known in her own world. Well, the beings of Apokolips and New Genesis maybe, but there were more risks there, especially with the former.

Now there she was, cutting loose, her thighs wedged firmly and a tongue that was a tongue slipping around her own labia, humming that echoed through her body as she gripped her own bed's edges, relishing that her own technology let her grip firmly. Death's tongue and lips at work. She hummed contentedly, feeling each and every inch of her there kissed and licked, the tongue slipping into her and along her lips as she cooed softly, then into her as the nose brushed her clit.

"You _are_ good at this," she hummed again, her hips rolling, the sounds of slurping and of her own wetness loud to her ears. She had an Endless eating her out, was able to squeeze with the full measure of her strength without killing someone. Little wonder the Raven in that world had become so addicted to her. Her powers reduced her more broadly into a kind of isolation from others. A touch that was always reserved, never truly her, and away from everything else. A thing that left a deep, lasting psychological barrier and not one easily removed. To have this, to have freedom to be, to be a person, to move her hips and squeeze and savor that another person could take this and not die nor even show the least sign of discontent amplified her already-considerable pleasure.

Her juices were gushing over Death's face, and the Endless blinked and moved slightly to keep it out of her eyes, not that she really felt pain nor quite needed it, more to satisfy what Karen wanted, needed. She could feel when the trembles and the wetness and the way that Karen's thighs vibrated at levels most beings could not have told became first one and then several orgasms, wielding a minor facet of her differences to greedily drink down every bit of Karen's cum that she could, humming contentedly at the same time. The first orgasm was silent, the sixth was noisier, contended, the eighth marked by a low and guttural moan before Karen slipped off of Death, hovering over her slightly.

She cooed contentedly, feeling the pleasure coursing through her with a power and a heat to match Earth's own Sun, the Sun that had given her her gifts and her curse.

The Endless trembled at multiple levels, the flesh that was not flesh sliding against sheets with little motions and her thighs trembling in a way she could only partially grasp with her own pleasure hazing her sight for a moment.

Then she lowered herself between Death's legs, hovering in the air, her hands on the Endless's inner thighs.

"My, someone enjoys getting other people off," to which the only response was a muffled moan that sounded like an mmhmm from Death, whose eyes shone with a desire and a hunger.

"You were right, I haven't had anything like that in a long time," she mused, and then her hand that was on Death's right thigh slid down to her own labia, which parted easily for the touch while the clit met her thumb and Death jerked slightly to the motion.

"So very sensitive for one of the Seven," teased Karen. "Not that I mind, of course. Here I am giving you exactly what you want, in the way you want it," Death's response was a quiet whine that affirmed her understanding as Karen laughed and then moved her hand away and manipulated her breath to blow on Death's pussy, blending that with deft touches at super-speed so fast only Death being an Endless meant that she understood there _was_ touch involved. Death was eager, content, more than satisfied that her lover had found such great pleasure at her hands. That she had done this, again, and satisfied someone who-her eyes stared at the ceiling and her mouth parted in a silent scream as her body froze and jerked and arced upward and she came with a convulsive series of pleasures that marked her own multi-orgasmic streak. Only Raven, before, had given her this and to experience it at the hands of another....

She had a feeling that Raven would welcome that story, would welcome knowing that Power Girl's response had been immediately to grab her hips and her ass in a grip of iron and to clamp her jaws down, drinking her juices down in a way Raven, even, with all her cosmic power never quite managed. She stared at the ceiling, fascinated at how it blended Earth technology to create not merely a mirror of Krypton's sciences but from the seemingly primitive technology of Earth (seemingly! Atlantis was equal to Oa in technology and feared across the universe as creating in a manner of centuries what Oa had taken two billion years to do) but its true mirror. The ceiling shone with crystalline facets matching that of Krypton and she hummed appreciatively again as Karen drank down her pleasure until it subsided and her body landed against the sheets with that strange sound that was not quite that of a mortal.

Death smiled.

 _ **Told you I could take it,**_ and Karen just grinned and then with that her hand slid in, starting with her pointer finger, then her middle finger, both moving in a kind of vibrating speed that had Death groaning in pleasure again, staring at the crystalline facets, realizing that there were fractal patterns here, the names. The Argonian and Kryptonese-proper names of the entire House of El preserved in a way that other beings might have missed but she knew, and of course Kara herself did. It was a thing that left her humbled in a sense, reminded that while she knew her function in its fullness, and more intimately since the encounter with the entities beyond the Source Wall when part of what she knew between universes had boldly strode within them, to mortals it was aching and to Karen Starr it was a mirror of her own loneliness.

Three fingers, and she shuddered and her body arched as she underwent that same multi-orgasmic streak and Karen's fingers moved and once more she drank deeply until Death sunk back into the bed, shuddering and though she did not breathe, her jaw gaped open slightly and her tongue extended out and the trembles were like that, a reminder of how wondrous and amazing and yet fragile it must be to be truly mortal.

Then the fingers were back in and joined by the fourth, and then the thumb and Karen smiled with a carnivorous smile that hadn't quite been on her face before. Death smiled, this was a thing that could be and was painful for mortals but for her offered a kind of pleasure that redeemed itself and was one of many small benefits to being Endless, and not truly mortal or flesh at all. Then the fist began that same vibration trick and Death found her own vision overwhelmed such that the main-her in her apartment, the singular bit of bright light and calm and comfort in the endless darkness of the Sunless Lands that performed their role in upholding the seven principles of all life looked up with a startled amazement.

 ** _So that's why they call it the little death,_** she tittered in her apartment, and then decided she might pay Raven a visit soon. It had been centuries since they'd last seen each other, and their meetings were always so much more fun than the dreary drinking and chatting of Dream and Hob Gadling.

The moment passed for what might have been a hundred thousand years or twenty minutes but when it was done, Karen's hand was soaked down to the wrist, and she held it up as Death's weary gaze looked at it with stupefied awe.

Karen's own low whistle punctuated it.

"You took my fist vibrating at a speed that if I held it against the Earth for long enough I could tunnel right through it and destroy it the boring but practical way."

Death's eyes rolled slightly at the awfulness of the pun but she grinned.

 _ **Nothing you can do can hurt me,**_ she purred, and with that Karen was over her and her lips cleaned her own juices off of the hand of a being more powerful than many gods and the entirety of the rest of her own species. Slurping along the wrist and the palm and the knuckles, taking each finger and the thumb in her mouth like it was a cock and enjoying showcasing her skills then, before Karen slid back and in a blur she found herself bound anew in a position that would have and did make regular physics take a look, double-take, throw up its hands, and then go to a bar to get smashed. She was suspended in mid-air with ropes that would have crushed the circulatory system of a true being bound by flesh and blood, and it was only Kara realizing how far she could go that had led her to do this.

She had a new strap-on now, one with two prongs, a longer one below, a shorter one above, and they both tapped against Death's body, against her wet and well-used pussy, and she stiffened with anticipation and delight when the other one brushed between her ass cheeks to tap against her ass. Power Girl's hand was against her throat with a crushing grip that would have easily been fatal but here, there was no risk, only enjoyment and a breath cold as the Void against her and a whisper in her ear, not the confident and calm tone of Karen Starr, CEO, nor the soft and often angry and resentful with survivor's guilt tones of Kara Zor-L. This was the confident and domineering voice of Power Girl: 

"Scream for me," and then the strap-on was inside her and her Kryptonian conqueror moved with a speed that would have shattered the building and made seismologists worldwide wonder if not for its construction and the materials woven within it. A minute and a half of this and Death did scream and she did not stop, a quirk of her being, and a mirror of her contentment, her pleasure, her happiness in being so claimed and so owned. There was a brutish element to this, yes, but there were others, too. There was a being who trod a world of cotton candy where she was iron and was free to just be herself, to be messy, to not have that rigid iron control for a change There was the reality that she felt the contentment here, the way her body moved and pressed and the continual shuddering element of Karen vibrating against her, hearing the low and throaty sounds of Karen Starr, and realizing that her own sounds were mirroring her.

Her one arm suspended above her head did not throb and become numb the way a mortal's arm did, it held her up just fine, and she felt that contentment, that pride. Here again she had given selflessly, this time not to slake old hurts but to give a royal's reward after a fashion. And here she was feeling a sense of contentment at being treated like a person, a powerful person able to sustain the grip of such a monstrously strong and mighty Kryptonian without fear. Her body clay to be moulded and her screams of pleasure intertwining with the way their bodies met and with the splatter of her juices against the sheets.

No means of gauging the time bar the way the Moon moved along in the sky but she didn't care, letting Karen spend as much time as she wished and even an Endless found her sensations blurring and becoming brief spasms of hyper-reality, toes brushing against a sheet with one leg, her knee with another, her body groped and gripped with a power that would have shattered anything short of the Spectre or Raven with contemptuous ease but with her felt vigorous, pleasant.

Finally Karen pulled out and the ropes were suddenly gone and she fell forward onto the bed, her hair slick against her, fists clenching and groaning, knowing how tempting she must look with her face down and her ass up but she, she of the Endless, was too tired to do more than slump down all the way, feeling a warmth through her.

"I know that Raven took her own souvenirs of her own time with you, as did Starfire. I know what a clusterfuck that was so I won't do that...." Death looked and then saw a hovering thing that looked like the ugliest metal fly in the world until it glowed and shone with energy.

"Found that in another world. A rather unpleasant place, it reminded me a little too much of that movie 300 and people like us don't need to be associated with that kind of stuff. But it's good at what it does. And it can capture one like you in a set of pictures for all time," and with that Karen's grip reached down and she pulled Death back slightly, smirking contentedly as she entered her again and began to move and the images caught them thus, Death's hair pulled back by an iron grip, the taller and strong yet lithe form of Karen moving in that blurring speed, Death's body visible beneath her and the O-face of Death caught and lost in her pleasures.

Dawn was creeping into the sky with blood-red fingers by the time it had ended and Death and Karen were locked together in a tangle of bodies and limbs, Death content to be captured and held by Karen in their bed, Karen's hands against her and just being held for a time, her sleepless self across countless worlds in a small portion of infinity that was itself infinite even as this part of her felt warm and loved and like another small chunk in the endless everything of her enduring across time and space passed. Karen woke up that morning and she gave her a kiss as she slid her clothes back on in a gesture that was another small element of what she was beneath her shape.

Karen asked softly "Will I see you again?"

_**Many times, but only the last will be your end. That day will come, Kara Zor-L. You live a long time, but not forever.** _

A shadow crossed her face. _**Be thankful for that.**_

Karen saw the shadow and had Death lifted up in her arms and kissed her deeply.

"Believe me, I am. It....makes it easier and worth more to know it can and will end, eventually."

Death smiled, brightly.

 _ **Exactly.**_ _ **Life always ends, that's what gives it its value. Be seeing you,**_ and in a sudden moment in time she was gone and Karen stood there, feeling her air conditioning against her body and looking at the sex-smell saturated room and the mess of her sheets and shook her head and strode off to a soothing warm shower. Somehow, things felt both lighter and more real and she would find ways to enjoy that for the times to come.

A CENTURY AND A DAY LATER:

In another world Karen Starr was facing not the familiar heroes of her time but the mess produced when her cousin had retired, and new and more violent and willful heroes had taken his place. There had been a battle and the her here had died, and yet her presence soothed the Clark here and she helped him exorcise some of his own ghosts. It was slow work but worthwhile, and yet she smirked as Clark almost jumped out of his skin and turned to find a woman dressed all in black, skin the hue of bone and hair dark as night and infinitely so with eyes and lips to match.

**_I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd catch up._ **

Karen smiled and took her hand and then turned to Clark.

"Clark, meet my....friend."

**_Call me Didi. Didi D'eath._ **


End file.
